GUA Transfer Protocol

for transferring agreements between branches and affiliates

We are pleased to announce the publication of the 2018 FIA Tech Give-Up Agreement Transfer Protocol.

Initiative Overview:

In preparation for potential Brexit-related business migrations, many firms have indicated that a significant number of new Give-Up Agreements may be needed to service clients via EU27-based affiliates or branches. Given the operational and legal efforts required to initiate and execute a high-volume of individual agreements in a short period of time, firms have requested additional tools to assist in streamlining re-papering efforts. FIA Tech has worked with the FIA Law & Compliance Division to develop legal and technical solutions enabling these bulk-agreement transfers between entities. To this end, the 2018 FIA Tech Give-Up Agreement Transfer Protocol (the Protocol) has been created, which firms may adopt to support these bulk agreement transfers between affiliates. The formal launch date for the protocol will be Monday, September 17, 2018. It will be supported with a new release of FIA Tech’s Docs service entering production on Sunday, September 16th.

Protocol Overview:

By adopting the Protocol once, parties to existing Give-Up Agreements agree to the legal process of cloning the terms of existing agreements with obligations transferred to a qualified broker affiliate or branch. While created with careful consideration of Brexit-driven transitions, the Protocol has been designed to support other types of corporate or regulatory-driven transitions.

The full language of the Protocol, as well as additional details, may be found here.

Because of the large volume of Give-Up Agreements which may need to transition to affiliates in the near term, we ask you to consider the adoption of the Protocol as one tool to ease transition and ensure uninterrupted give-up trading during broker transitions. Please read the terms of the Protocol carefully, discuss with your legal advisers and your brokers.

There is no charge to adopt the Protocol.

Parties that adopt the Protocol may revoke the adoption of the Protocol in the future, according to the terms of the Protocol.

Conformed (active user) parties within Docs may adopt the protocol directly through the application, as well as review the adoption status of their counterparties. A pop-up message will be presented to all users with “Execution Phase Approver” permissions, providing the Transfer Protocol (including the option to Download as PDF or Print). The pop-up contains all parties for which the user is sufficiently permissioned, and users will be have the option to select their desired parties, and “Adopt” on behalf of these entities. Users will also have the option to temporarily dismiss this message via the “Close for Now” button, as well as permanently prevent the pop-up by selecting “Don’t show me this again”. Users may review the adoption status of their own parties through the Manage Parties tool, and may review counterparty adoption via the Docs Counterparty Report. Additional details on the adoption workflow may be found in the below Help Center articles, and please reach out to Docs.Support@fia-tech.com with any additional questions surrounding adoption by Conformed parties.

Adoption Workflow – Non-Conformed (pdf-only) Docs Users

Non-conformed (not actively managed) parties within Docs must adopt the protocol by submitting a signed hard-copy of the Protocol through a conformed counterparty. Non-conformed entities must supply at least one valid email contact for subsequent notice of any agreement transfers supported by the protocol. Counterparties will then be able to upload signed documentation into Docs, which will display entities as having adopted the protocol.